Winner announced for RNA’s Romantic Novel of the Year Award – The Romantic Novelists’ Association awarded its award winners last week, in seven categories: Contemporary, Epic, Historical Romantic Novel, Paranormal or Speculative Romantic Novel, Romantic Comedy, RoNA Rose, and the Goldsboro Books Romantic Novel of the Year. Author and chef Prue Leith presented the ... more >
9 Things We Learned From The ‘Insecure’ Writing Staff’s Panel At The Writer’s Guild Foundation – It’s no secret that I love Issa Rae’s Insecure and am thrilled at her recent Golden Globes nomination. Although it’s not long, this point by point summary of Rae’s writing panel at the WGF reflects the overall ... more >
Dear County Agent Guy by Jerry Nelson In the tradition of Mark Twain and Jean Shepherd, Dave Barry and Garrison Keillor, Jerry Nelson is a humorist whose beat is the American heartland, a small-town world of pickup trucks and Sunday night pancake dinners, dropping in on neighbors and complaining about ... more >
Amazon opens its first real bookstore — at U-Village – The rumors, apparently, are true. Amazon now has its first brick and mortar bookstore, in Seattle, and while it is selling some of the same books as Amazon.com at the same prices (including a book written by Jeff Bezos’s wife, MacKenzie), ... more >
Jay Z, Timbaland Win ‘Big Pimpin” Sample Trial – Timbaland was sued for sampling some flute music from the Egyptian song, “Khosara, Khosara,” by the composer’s nephew. The lawyer for the defense argued that Baligh Hamdi, the song’s composer, sold his rights, before he died, to his record company. That company, in turn, ... more >
Plan ‘B’: How A Feminist Comic Book Found Devoted Fans Through Absurdity – A great interview with Kelly Sue DeConnick on the origins of the comic Bitch Planet, the first five issues of which were released this week as a graphic novel. DeConnick talks about how being pigeonholed as an “angry feminist,” ... more >